The present invention relates to a vehicle lighting apparatus having a resin member.
A conventional vehicle lighting apparatus (called as briefly “vehicle lamp” or “lamp” hereafter) is furnished with a top-coat layer (protecting film) for protecting an evaporated layer in a reflecting mirror evaporated with aluminum. It is often practical to color the top-coat layer for coloring a light reflected on a reflecting mirror (called as “reflector” hereafter) part when lighting, and emitting, or to color the light injected into a lighting chamber at daylight, and reflected on the reflector part. The coloring of the top-coat layer is performed for giving high grade feeling or chromatically distinguishing the lamp in outside designs.
The lamp furnished with such a colored top-coat layer is disclosed in the Japanese Application Publication Number: 2001-273804 (JP-A-2001-273804), and is shown in FIG. 10.
In this lamp, a resin substrate 501 composing a reflector 5 is formed on its surface with an under-coat layer 502, an aluminum evaporated layer 503 is formed on the under-coat layer 502, and top-coat layers 505, 506 are formed on the aluminum evaporated layer 503 by a smoke coating. Of these top-coat layers 505, 506, the top-coat layer 505 having a significant surface 5x of the reflector 5 is not scattered with a pigment so as to make less loss of a light emitted from a light source, while the top-coat layers 505, 506 having a non-significant surface 5y is scattered with the pigment so as to color them for chromatically heightening the lamp in an outside design.
For manufacturing such a reflector 5, processes as shown in FIG. 11 are necessary.
At first, a forming process S1 is performed where a raw resin material of the reflector 5 is formed into a resin substrate 501 of a desired shape by such as an injection molding. Next, an under-coat layer forming process S2 is carried out to the formed resin substrate 501 on the surface thereof for heightening reflectance of aluminum. Subsequently, the process advances to an aluminum evaporating process S3 where an aluminum is subjected to a resistance heat evaporation to form an aluminum evaporated layer 503 on the under-coat layer 502. Then, the process goes to a smoke coating process S4 where the aluminum evaporated layer 503 is formed thereon with the top-coat layers 505, 506 by the smoke coating, and the reflectors is accomplished.
If the top-coat layers 505, 506 are formed on the reflector 5 by the smoke coating in order to improve the outside design of the lamp as disclosed in the above mentioned publication (JP-A-2001-273804), there are problems as follows.
Firstly, it is difficult to make a thickness of the coated film uniform, and there is left uneven outside appearance (as flaring up) being special to the coated face caused by difference in quantity of reflected light owing to irregularity of the coated film.
Further, in general, irregularity in the color is easy to appear. For example, if a density of a pigment is increased to make the colors deep, the pigment is difficult to disperse and easy to make lumps, so that the colors are easily irregular. Otherwise, reducing the density of the pigment to make the light colors, the coloring is poor, and if coating the paint several times, the paint runs down to easily cause the color to be irregular.
Since the coated film is wet for a little while after being coated, it absorbs foreign matters and spoils products. Thus, a yield is limited. Further, bad influences are given to environments by evaporation of a solvent contained in the paint.